


Dye

by MCMXCV



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, all of my baba yaga knowledge comes from reading the sisters grimm when i was like twelve, but is that what it is? who knows not me, description of mental illness that shows similarities to depression, i found the first paragraph in my ideas folder and just puked the rest out so, i have no idea what this is, is it tbc? don't know that either, it's called dye because i keysmashed a title into google docs and that's what it autocorrected to, open ended ending for now, so apologies for my decade old memories, these tags are really selling you on this story aren't they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 11:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17424812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MCMXCV/pseuds/MCMXCV
Summary: Something is wrong.





	Dye

**Author's Note:**

> so listen, i have no idea ok.
> 
> this has not been edited at all. i mean literally at all. like i found the first paragraph in my drafts and then typed some more and now im immediately posting it because i'm feeling chaotic and nothing matters. 
> 
> i may or may not come back to edit/add on to this, but for now y'all know the drill, if you find a typo/sentence that could barely be considered english/ just really hate this and want to tell me i will not be offended by any of those things i promise

Magic is emotion but depression is apathy: Spring is beautiful colors and love and life into summer which is love and fire which fizzles out like a Fourth of July sparkler as soon as the heat is no longer a novelty brought on by thaw and color and rain. When the leaves change it returns as warmth and laughter and family, but it is a short affair and Christmas is a memory before it even arrives. The time between New Years and the first buds of spring is the hardest. She forgets every year how hard life was before magic, and though each frozen solstice is harder and harder to recover from, the other months at least allow some weeks of reprieve. In winter, she is lucky to have a day or two of soft tranquillity falling from the heavens, bringing barely enough joy to summon a book or light a fire in the cold hearth.

Regina helps, Regina always helps, but she is loathe to put this burden on the woman who has suffered so much more than she. Though Regina never struggles with magic. Regina is never in want of the emotions from which their gift draws breath-power-life. She knows, still, that Regina’s pain manifests differently from hers. And that is okay. That is fine. But she will not add to it. Regina asks, her parents ask, even Henry wanders toward her chair, cushion permanently indented with the force of her sloth, to ask. She is tired of not having an answer, so she locks the door and tells Henry to stay with his mother. She tells him she loves him, and she knows that there is a somewhere where she does, where she can, but she tells him now because he needs to hear it. She tells him to stay with his mother, and she locks the door against the frozen days that strip her of the fire she has come to cherish. And she waits. She loses weight, she loses time, but she has nothing else to lose so she waits. Until the green speckled hope creeps tentatively forth into a slumbering world. Until the verdant life spreads and spreads into pinks and purples and yellows, and finally, finally, she can breathe again.

She tries not to think about how this is the start of the next cycle. How none of this joy matters when she knows that in just a few short months her will to go on will dwindle with the daylight. She knows about Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD. She grew up in this world and she has been diagnosed with every illness on the face of it. But somehow she knows like she knows that the magic that simmers deep in her belly on the better days, that this is more. It’s like she can feel the very essence of life itself ebbing like a tide. It lives inside her like a tangible thing that she knows she could hold so  _ tightly _ if she could just reach deep enough to grab ahold of it. But she doesn’t, because it’s dark right now, a waning crescent, and without the sun or moon she often has no energy to lift even a finger. 

Regina has tried many,  _ many _ times to find a solution. The house has more plants than furniture at this point, and on a good day, she will joke that she always loved Jumanji. The sparkle of love and hope that joke always brings to her wife’s eyes is enough to last through a dozen dark days after. 

They’ve asked  _ him _ , of course. They’d long since crossed that holy line of desperation that for the most part keeps his presence out of their lives. For once, the dark one has no answers. She had always felt this, even before magic. He says that some amount of magical signature is to be expected, and the fairies agree with this assessment, but to be in tune with the living world to such a degree indicates a type of magick that is outside the purview of his fairytale jurisdiction. 

One morning, when it has been a particularly deadened night and she is half surprised to have lived through it, she sneaks out into the early rays of dawn. She leaves her wife slumbering peacefully in their bed and takes clothes to change into downstairs, determined that if she is going to go through with this then she needs to be yelled at for it  _ after _ the fact. She isn’t scared, she isn’t sure she is capable of fear anymore, but she is apprehensive that she won’t get any answers and she feels guilty for the worry she knows her wife will wake up to.

Baba Yaga’s hut is at the very heart of the forest. Far beyond where the Merry Men even venture. The woods are beautiful at this time of the morning, and if she weren’t so winded from the hike across a magically lengthened distance then she might even stop to let the rays of dappled sunlight that peak through the canopy warm her face. But as it stands, she is winded and irritated and still a bit apprehensive. As she moves closer to the hut and feels the energy that vibrates around it tickle her in all the most uncomfortable of ways, her apprehension grows. The skulls that begin to line her path aren’t what cause the sudden spike of worry, rather it is the sudden realization that she might actually get what she came for, and she isn’t sure that she is ready to face it.

She reaches the hut without realizing it, but when she becomes aware of her location she remains stationary. She stares at the little home for as long as she can bear to make eye contact with a skull, but it’s difficult to win a staring contest when your opponent’s eyes haven’t existed for millennia. Or so says the witch.

“You won’t win,” are her actual words, and Emma knows what she is referring to without needing to ask. Still, it takes her a long moment to drag her eyes away from the painfully familiar human remains and to the woman? that stands before her. Baba Yaga needs no introduction, nor need she explain her line of work. Emma almost expects her to have the answer to her question before she even asks it, but the witch merely tilts her head at the blonde and says, “you’re a curious one, aren't’ you?” And Emma has no idea what context that could possibly be meant in. 

She has heard the horror stories, of course. Everyone in Storybrooke has. Even growing up across the continental United States Emma had heard the name once or twice. Regina is going to kill her if she survives this. 

“I need help. Please.”


End file.
